This disclosure relates to the general field of mercantile storage and display, and in particular, to the storage and display of industrial endless belts such as so-called “V-belts.”
Industrial machines and devices such as, but not limited to, automobiles, lawnmowers, washing machines, drill presses, tillers, snow blowers, compressors, pumps, saws, conveyor systems, crushers, tree debarkers, combines, hay bines, unloaders, sprayers, etc., make widespread use of endless drive belts, such as so-called V-belts, to transmit various driving forces from one drive element to another. These endless industrial drive belts are manufactured in a vast variety of sizes, e.g., diameters, widths, and depths, depending on their intended use, such that a merchant who carries these belts often has a great deal of difficulty storing and displaying them in an organized and compact fashion.
Additionally, these belts 1 are often stored in a manner that causes them to be bent into an overly-tight curvature radius at various positions around their circumference, such as, but not limited to, when they are commonly packaged as shown in FIG. 1. These types of substantially asymmetric belt storage methods can cause belt to stretch unnaturally in certain regions (such as at the opposite end regions of FIG. 1) and become deformed and misshapen, which can damage the belt and limit its useful lifetime. While such belts are manufactured to be bent when inn use, the storing of a belt for a long period of time with a severe bend in one portion of the belt can be harmful to the belt by unduly stressing the cords at that bent belt portion and causing premature failure of that belt. The natural configuration of such belts is circular or nearly circular (i.e., ovular), with a convex curvature around the entire outer circumference of these belts, and its is desirable to store these belts in a manner that does not deform these belts too much from such a natural configuration.
The prior art reveals a limited number of efforts to provide for the storage of endless drive belts, all of which are unsatisfactory in various way. U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,745, for example, illustrates a belt packaging tray. Although this tray appears to provide a compact means for shipping a plurality of endless drive belts, these belts are tightly and unnaturally wound in a way that can deform their natural shape. In particular, this tray causes some regions of the outer circumferences of these belts to be unnaturally bent with a concave curvature, such as in the region of FIG. 1 surrounding reference numeral 14c. This concave bending of a belt opposite to the natural bend with which it is manufactured and used is particularly harmful to belt life. In addition, the packaging of U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,745 causes other outer circumference belt regions to be bent convexly, but too tightly relative to the natural radius of curvature, such as in the upper left and upper right regions of FIG. 1. This too is harmful to belt life. Also, it does not appear to be possible to easily remove and replace any one belt from this tray without disrupting all of the other belts in the tray.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,942,637 similarly discloses an endless belt package which unnatural curvatures into the belts, and also, which wastes valuable space that might otherwise be used for compact and efficient belt storage, such as the spaces in FIG. 3 that enclose reference numerals 31, 22, 35, and 27. Here too, it does not appear to be possible to easily remove and replace any one belt from this tray without disrupting all of the other belts in the tray.
A related patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,162,009, is for packaging endless fabrics, rather than drive belts. However, if the teachings of this patent were applied to the non-analogous art area of drive belts, the unnaturally-tight bending illustrated in this patent, while perhaps suitable for fabrics, could again be damaging if applied to drive belts. Similarly, removal and replacement of any one fabric without disrupting the remaining fabrics appears to be impossible.
Also of background interest is U.S. Pat. No. 4,890,730, insofar as the device disclosed therein appears to be used to hold several different sizes of elastic bands such as rubber bands.
However, none of these references addresses the fundamental concern of compactly storing and displaying a large variety of endless drive belts in a systematic, organized manner, for mercantile use, without introducing unnatural and possibly-deforming bends into these belts.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a system, apparatus and method that enables drive belts of a wide range of sizes to be easily and compactly stored in an organized manner.
It is further desirable for the same system, apparatus and method that stores these endless drive belts to also be usable to display these belts without having to remove the belts from storage, thereby enabling a drive belt merchant to easily convert between the storage and the display of his or her drive belts.
It is further desirable to enable individual drive belts to be removed from storage or display, and later replaced back into storage or display, easily, quickly, and without disrupting the remaining belts which are not removed.
It is further desirable to ensure that drive belts are stored and displayed in a manner that does not cause unnatural bending, either by bending the outer circumference of the belts concavely, or by bending the outer circumference of the belts convexly with a curvature radius that exceeds their natural radius of curvature by more than 2 to 1, or 3 to 1, or 4 to 1, or 5 to 1, or, at the outer limit, 6 to 1.
It is further desirable for drive belts to be stored in a way that enables identifying labels on the sides of these belts to be easily viewed while the belts are in storage.
It is further desirable to ensure that drive belts are stored in an environment where they are protected from exposure to elements such as dust and sunlight.